How to Say Goodbye

The one where I am naked

The next morning I sneak out of my room at 4 . I tiptoe not to wake anyone up .

When I reach the entrance I become glad to find it open .

I remember my mother telling me how it always felt like the river was surrounding the town . You can get lost, but you'll always find a way towards the river .

Before my father had gotten transferred into this town , in our old city I had developed a habit of running . And I still ran before dawn in here , when there weren't people around . I didn't have a special place . I just ran by the river side . Through the trees . Most people spent their time in those areas during the day , but when I was out everyone else was simply asleep. So even the most common places felt like my secret spot .

I let my legs guide me as I felt the air rush past . I pulled my robe tighter onto my body . But that doesn't seem to be enough to provide warmth . I shrug the unpleasant feeling off and walk faster .

The sun seems still too far away from the land to rise when I reach the river side . I walk along the path and watch the water . It's violet , just like the name . And while it's beautiful it's impossible to see anything underneath that water . Maybe that's what gave me the courage to skinny deep now and all those years ago .

I strip and fold my clothes . I leave them by the tree as I walk near the water . First a centimeter , then an inch, a bit more and a bit more! It doesn't take long before my neck touches the surface . I look up at the sky the moon isn't that visible anymore . The clouds had engulfed it in their warmth as the water had done me .

I pulled my arms up and again with a splash sent them down .

As a teen my imagination was quite all over the place . And when I used to just sit and watch the sunrise , I almost always dreamt of a whale jumping up from the water and whistling .

As my arms created the small waves I'd be lying if I said I didn't imagine miniature whales around me . There was just something peaceful about that animal .

I had never seen a single fish in this place with my own eyes , but during the sun rise and during full moons I imagined a whole pod of whales . All dancing and flying off to the sky to travel away with the moon .

When my hands started giving up and feeling numb I stopped and focused letting go of my body .

Floating seemed essential at that moment and I wondered if I could just fall asleep like that .

A bit of rustling near the trees up north caught my attention and for a brief moment I felt scared of the thought of a man , but then a bat flew away and took my tension away too . I sighed but kept my head turned towards the path that I came in . If I tried hard enough I could still imagine a lot of things .

But a lot of things weren't playing on my mind . My thoughts only travelled to one person and it felt like I could see him in the fog. Just there by the trees walking closer and closer to the river without even noticing me. Just like the way he had done that day .

It was summer back then . And skinny dipping felt better than ever . I had grown a bad habit of swimming every day back then .

It was a week after the whole pebble throwing incident . Mr. Jones was enough to apologize and ask me to not let his sons' behavior bother me . I gave him the papers that day but I didn't say anything about how I'll treat his son from then on.

And I was glad that much treatment wasn't needed because we were both pretending that the other one was visible from the next day and things were going well .

I was swimming back then . At times doing back strokes and just looking at the moon . The moon wasn't full yet that month but it was still shining brightly due to lack of clouds . It was probably my earliest visit to that place .

Just as I was walking near the shore to get up I heard leaves crunching . I knew someone was walking near so I got under water as much as possible . I knew diving would be meaningless since there's no telling how long this person would stay . So I tried to hide as much as possible in other ways .

I remember the sound getting closer and closer . I had seen the silhouette first , of a lanky boy . My heart skipped a beat at first . I prayed to the stars to not let this become that big of a cliché . But it was .

He stood a few feet away from where I was and looked directly at the moon .

And I saw him . And then I heard him .

At first he started pulling on his own hair and then kicked some pebbles sending them glide across the river . And then he crouched down and to my astonishment he started crying . He cried and he wailed and at times he said things that came muffled and not quite audible . But I knew he had said 'why me' more than a few times.

I thought about getting up and comforting him but I remembered that I was naked and that wasn't an option .

I stayed as still as possible underwater while he stayed . Thankful that the tree branch was hiding me from his view . If I crawled up now I might safely get away from his sight, I thought . But I knew that was too much wishful thinking .There was no way he would not notice me and there was no way that someone like me would be as silent as possible .

I waited for him to get up and I waited for him to go away . But there was something too simple , too trivial for me to think of ,at that moment : my clothes .